Have you ever come across any music that makes you feel like you’ve entered another dimension? The music of Icelandic instrumental band GlerAkur does just that. Now you have a chance to experience their epic walls of sound live tomorrow night at Húrra in downtown Reykjavík.
GlerAkur’s debut album ‘The Mountains Are Beautiful Now’, released earlier this year via Prophecy Productions, is an immersive experience of vast, beautiful and ethereal soundscapes. The album is layered with ambient guitars and percussion, which create a unique atmosphere.
Elvar Geir Sævarsson, the founder and composer of the band, started jamming and writing bits and pieces back in 2008. In Icelandic, “Gler” means glass, and “Akur” means field. “My friend said it sounds like a mashup of Philip Glass and Mike Oldfield,” Elvar laughs, thus the name GlerAkur. If you have to put a label on their music, it can be post rock, post metal, shoegaze, or a sum of all of the above.
As a sound designer for the National Theatre of Iceland, Elvar writes music and designs sound effects for plays at the theatre. “I was doing music for a show called ‘The Outlaw and His Wife’, a tragic love story about an outlawed Icelandic couple,” he said.
In the play, the couple were forced to leave their home and live in the Highlands, and they eventually died tragically. “For this play I decided to go all in without holding myself back,” Elvar commented, “It comes easy for me to express sorrow and hardship for some reason.” Eventually, the music for the play became part of GlerAkur’s hauntingly beautiful album.
GlerAkur has played different festivals including Iceland Airwaves and Prophecy Fest in Germany. Armed with four guitarists and two drummers, they will for sure bring you to an emotional and spiritual dimension.
See GlerAkur and World Narcosis play on Thursday, Nov. 30, 2017 at 8 PM at Húrra, Tryggvagata 22, 101 Reykjavík. Tickets are available via tix.is.
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